Robert Walker - Grave Instinct

“ Are you sure, Strand?” Jessica asked, her face creased with doubt.

“ It's how he referred to it back then, again and again.”

“ All right. Go for it, J.T.”

“ If it's wrong, we'll have to take it to the experts at Quantico.” J.T. keyed it in and suddenly erupted. “Bingo! Our friendly neighborhood lunatic's website is coming up on the screen now.”

J.T. scanned several lines off the master page, and then said, “ Brain Matters-Home of the Soul and the Cosmic Mind'-his banner reads. We gotta confiscate all this, Jess.” A comical character looking like a mad professor blipped on the screen, asking, “Got brains?”

“ This guy's something else,” Jessica said as the cartoon image came up on the screen.

“ Do a search, Dr. Thorpe,” said Max.

“ Of what?”

“ Recipes, you gotta see this.”

“ You're serious?”

“ Absolutely.”

J.T. keyed in the word. After fifteen seconds, he replied, “Here we are. Chat room for brain recipes. Brain Kabob, Shrimp Creole and Brains, the ever-popular Brains and Eggs. And here's Brains and Legs-poultry. Damn, here's Beef Bullion Brains, Creamed Spinach is under a whole list of vegetarian brain casseroles, and it goes on. Someone here even sharing a recipe for Brain Brownies and Chocolate Moose.”

“ Forget about the recipes,” said Jessica. “Key in 'island,' 'isle,' 'Rheil'… see what we have there.”

Again J.T. typed into the search box.

“ What is this island of the brain place?” asked Owens.

Now the ancient brain surgeon, Rheil, was depicted on the computer screen as well, along with the article Jessica had seen in the hefty book, scanned and lifted word for word, down to the photograph of Rheil.

“ So this is what the man was searching for when he dug up all those graves,” commented J.T.

“ A bit of gray matter, real estate deep within the cortex.” Jessica leaned in closer.

“ I give you the Island of Rheil,” Strand said. “Finally, someone is paying attention. Take a walk with a lunatic to an island in his mind.”

Owens swallowed hard, regretting the odors going down his throat.

Jessica read aloud from the screen. “Rheil believed that this island of tissue supposedly housed the spirit since it had no apparent physical reason for being-or for being located at the core of the brain, at the geographic center of the cortex. He then concluded that it must have a spiritual reason for being there, since in his words, ‘all things unknowable must then be spiritual’.” Jessica paused and then read the remaining short paragraphs devoted to the man.

“ Daryl conveniently left out that the man's scientific method was questionable to say the least,” said Jessica. “The article he copied this from ended with a good deal of skepticism.”

“ Not included on Cahil's website meanderings,” added Max. “Any disparagement surrounding Dr. Rheil's work and conclusions found no way into Daryl Cahil's thinking.”

Jessica then lifted the book she'd discovered Rheil in and read on. “ 'The drama and flare of Rheil's conclusions, according to contemporaries and colleagues, far outweighed any scientific reasoning or study of the Island of Rheil.' “

“ Check out the footnote,” said Strand, pointing. The book footnoted the feet that Rheil's work had been cut short by an untimely death from a brain fever. In his will, he asked that his own island be removed and preserved for scientific investigation. However, no one continued his study, only adding fuel to the mystery of his strange discovery.

Cahil's own editorializing on Rheil appeared fictitious, that the man not only removed and studied his “finds” but that he consumed them. He pointed out the robustness and content in the man's image at so advanced an age, claiming him more than a hundred years old in the photograph.

“ Daryl fixated on this bogus nonsense,” said Strand, “as he testified at his trial. It's what got to all the shrinks, his telling the court that he actually robbed graves from '89 to '90 for this thing-why he took his dead victim's heads off with him, to dig this sac of tissue out of their brains.”

“ Cahil's courtroom elocution-did it get any press?” asked Jessica.

“ None. Courtroom was sealed from the press. Special arrangement agreed upon by prosecution, the defense and Judge Hiram Skinner. Nobody really wanted this business to fuel headlines for months. It was all so damned bizarre, and the court officials really did want to spare the families any more indignities and harm.” “So it takes on the proportions of a legend, shrouded in mystery,” said Jessica in a near whisper.

“ Hollywood wanted to make a film,” replied Strand. “On any account, no details were released other than a few generalities labeling Cahil as a cannibal, and with the press shut out, all sorts of rampant reporting went on, especially in the tabloids, how he was a sex-lust murderer, which didn't apply, how he was a necrophiliac, you name it.”

Jessica recalled how Lorena Combs, as a high-school student, had gotten the story.

Strand went on. “He replaced the boogeyman; hell, he was the boogeyman. Christ, before Cahil's activities, the dead could assume themselves safe in their graves, but not anymore. Imagine the parents of these departed children learning what had happened to their babies? Like I said, Judge Skinner, with the best of intentions, didn't allow cameras or reporters in the courtroom. Nobody but people directly involved in the prosecution and defense of the case, which included Drs. Gabriel Arnold and a young Jack Deitze on one side, me and my partner, along with Newark detectives on the other.”

“ So the trial transcripts and what Deitze has on him are the only record of his madness?”

“ Until now. He's still thinking the same thoughts only now with live game.”

“ To get at this lump of brain tissue?” J.T. asked, clicking on an icon that opened on a sketch with a caption indicating it was a drawing of the Island of Rheil. “Here it is. Look familiar?”

asked J.T.

It was the first time that J.T. had seen Cahil's drawing to compare it with what they had found inside the victims' skulls. “It does look like the cross,” Jessica muttered into J.T.'s ear, “in a rough kind of way.”

J.T. shook off a shiver and asked, “How mad can men get, Jess?”

“ It would appear as mad as they wanna be.”

J.T. clicked on an icon below the article. The computer screen now filled with a scanned photograph of something oddly shaped like a small filleted fish lying beside a six-inch ruler, measuring approximately two inches. It had the gray appearance of real brain tissue, bulbous at one end, cross shaped at the other. Below it read a caption: Human Rheil, sent to me by the Seeker. May 3, 2003-

“ What the hell is that?” asked Owens, pointing to the screen.

Strand said, “A photograph of this Rheil thing from an actual brain.”

“ From one of the Skull-digger's victims,” suggested J.T.

Jessica gasped and stared at the small strip of brain tissue. “This alone ought to put the man away for life.”

Morristown, New Jersey Early morning

“ DARYL'S website is getting hits from all over the U.S. and the planet, Jess,” J.T. told her.

“ Can you trace them?”

“ Which one? They're coming in at warp speed. We need more help and a focused target.”

A light drizzle had begun around the dark little house vacated by Daryl Thomas Cahil. Jessica had seen that the man's computer was equipped with a digital camera. She asked J.T. to bring up the photographic image of the material Cahil had labeled as a real piece of human brain tissue. “I want another look at it.”

Now she and Strand stood over J.T.'s shoulder, staring fixedly at the fleshy-looking lump in the digitized computer image. The tissue resembled skin peeled and cut away from a raw chicken leg, except that it was gray, tinged with a blueness, J.T. explained, “The blue color is either from being cold, or it's an enhancement made by Cahil-to dramatize it more.”